NIU’s College of Education is among the top 15 programs in the country, according to a recent study which measured faculty productivity in teacher education.

Jon Denton, a faculty member at Texas A&M University who organized the study, said the research was conducted by Texas A&M to discover which institutions are productive, so that Texas A&M can develop research programs at their university.

The study evaluated research conducted at each university in recent years, such as research done on cost-effective analysis or if the College of Education has researched teacher education, Denton said.

Muriel Mackett, associate dean for the College of Education, said, “We are fortunate to have a productive faculty.” She said receiving recognition for being ranked in the top 15 is “remarkable.”

Mackett said NIU has conducted extensive single-subject research with handicapped children and research in physical education for the handicapped, as well as policy and leadership research.

Denton said universities throughout the country were eligible to send in contributions for the study, and were ranked in two categories. The first consisted of contributions for conference (presentation) and the second category consisted of contributions for publication, he said.

Denton said the contributions were written by faculty members or graduate students from each university. He said the contributions came from presentation papers for a conference or from an organization’s journals.

More than 2,700 contributions were submitted from over 450 universities. The study covered the period from 1980 to 1984, he said.

The majority of the submissions were for conference contributions at 86.1 percent of the total, while 35.6 percent was for publications, Denton said. The competition for conferences was not as severe as the competition for publications, he said.

Denton said the study revealed that only about 35 percent of the universities submitted contributions for either conferences or publications. He said 65 percent of the universities either do not have a teacher education productivity program or they did not submit anything. A prior study showed these percentages have not changed in 10 years, he said.